Student Evaluation of Course and Teacher (SECaT)

Check and update SI-net and the ECP

At the beginning of each evaluation period, SECaT evaluations are automatically generated and scheduled according to the information in SI-net and the ECP. It is therefore important that course coordinators, lecturers and associate lecturers check this information prior to scheduled survey periods to avoid missing out on a SECaT evaluation.

In order for a SECaT Course Evaluation to be generated, there must be a course coordinator listed in SI-net. For a Teaching Evaluation to be generated, there must be one or more staff correctly listed as a ‘Lecturer’ or 'Associate Lecturer' on the ECP. Course coordinators must also list themselves as ‘Lecturer’ in order to receive a Teaching Evaluation.

Guest lecturers (no UQ Aurion ID) and staff who are incorrectly added to ECP will not be evaluated.

The correct way to add a 'Lecturer' or 'Associate Lecturer' to the ECP is as follows:

1. Open the ECP for the course that you wish to add a Lecturer/Associate Lecturer to.
2. Click the ‘Add’ button next to the ‘1.3 Course Staff’ heading.
3. Enter one or more search terms (e.g., family name, given name, and/or preferred name) and click ‘Search’.
4. Select the staff member from the search results and click ‘Next’, then ‘Save’.
5. If you cannot find the staff member in the search results please expand your search. Do not click ‘Add New’ and manually enter the Lecturer’s information as this method does not link with the UQ Aurion ID and therefore a Teaching evaluation will not be generated.

For detailed instructions, visit this page (section 1.3 Course Staff - Technical Help).

SECaT verification process: administrative staff 

ECPs are often managed by the School’s administrative staff. If you are new to managing evaluations for your School, the SECaT verification process was designed to ensure that all relevant details are correct and courses/teachers are evaluated in SECaTs. Please follow the link below to a step-by-step guide.

Verification process guide
If your course has fewer than six students

No. The SECaT survey is administrated when a course has six or more students enrolled. In order for all students to participate in summative evaluations, the Evaluations team can administrate a survey based on Open Research Questionnaire for courses with five or less students.

The Open Response Questionnaire consists of five open-ended questions: two relating to the teaching, and three relating to the course.

Academics may use the completed Open Response Questionnaire for their own personal feedback only. This survey is confidential and personal information will only be accessible by the Evaluations team. Responses will be forwarded to the course coordinator after the finalisation of grades each semester by the Evaluations team. Unlike the SECaT and SETutor, completed Open Response Questionnaires are not reported via formal mechanisms (UQ Reportal).

Access the Open Response Questionnaire

SECaT surveys may include photos of staff used as part of the survey instruments. A sample of the survey and photo can be viewed at example online SECaT (log in to the portal and enter SAMPLE into the password bar).

Staff may opt out of including a photo or may substitute their photo with another photo. Staff with surveys scheduled will have active accounts at myevals.eval.uq.edu.au (UQ login required) so that photos can be removed or changed. 

The photo system will be enabled when SECaT surveys have been created. 

To remove photo

1. Log in using your UQ login at: https://myevals.eval.uq.edu.au
2. Click Manage Photos which appears in the left-hand navigation menu.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Clear Active. All photos in your list will have "No" listed under Active. No photo of you will be included in your surveys. 

To change photo

1. Log in using your UQ login at: https://myevals.eval.uq.edu.au
2. Click Manage Photos which appears in the left-hand navigation menu.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Upload. A pop-up window appears.
4. Drag a photo file from your computer into the "Drop files here to upload" area then click Upload. Photos files should be less than 100KB in size. Large photos will take longer to upload and may appear like they have not uploaded when they are processing.

We recommend you use a desktop or laptop to action any photo removals or changes as mobile devices can display the interface incorrectly. The photo system is dynamically linked to your surveys and will be included as soon as edits are made and photos are processed within the systems.

Yes. You can do both in the Evaluation Portal (eval.uq.edu.au).

When you log in to your online survey portal page:

1. Enable "Demo Mode" as "On" (toggle on the right upper corner). Click on a survey to demonstrate to students. Note: Your demonstration response will not be recorded in the Demo Mode.
2. The "Response Ratio" displays a live response rate. You can also check the response rate for all courses evaluated by SECaTs.

SECaT results are released every semester after the finalisation of students’ results.

Course coordinators are emailed two reports: the SECaT course report (PDF, 47KB) and the SECaT teaching report (PDF, 48KB). Both of these reports contain a summary of the quantitative results as well as all qualitative feedback (comments). The course coordinator can choose to email a copy of the SECaT course report to all lecturers of the course if they wish to.

Lecturers are emailed their individual SECaT teaching report. This report contains a summary of the quantitative results as well as all qualitative feedback (comments).

SECaT results are also made available via the UQ Reportal. If you do not have access you will need to submit a request for access using the online form.

Links to different SECaT reports that are available to download from UQ Reportal are provided under SECaT course and teaching reports.

How to access and print your reports

• Instructions for SECaT course reports (PDF, 148KB)
• Instructions for SECaT teaching reports (PDF, 142KB)
• Instructions for the new SECaT details reports (PDF, 230KB)

Sample reports

• Example SECaT course report (PDF, 47KB)
• Example SECaT teaching report (PDF, 48KB)
• Example SECaT details report (PDF,906KB)

SECaT results are also available on the UQU SECaT dashboard, located on the UQU website. This dashboard is publicly accessible and displays all course quantitative results.

Academics are best placed to encourage students to participate in evaluations. It is good practice to undertake the following prior to the evaluation period:

• Provide students with notice that an online SECaT evaluation will be made available to students, giving any detail as necessary (e.g. tell students to check their student email account and the ‘Have Your Say’ module on the welcome page of Blackboard).
• Tell your students why SECaT evaluations are conducted and what they are used for.
• Set aside class time for students to use their own device (e.g., smart phone, tablet, laptop) to complete their SECaT evaluation. Academics that use this approach have been found to achieve higher response rates than those who do not set aside class time.
• Communicate the following message to your students:

“You will be asked to complete an online survey about your teaching and learning experiences in this course. This survey is voluntary and your responses are confidential. If you choose to provide comments in response to the open-ended questions, please ensure your comments contain constructive feedback that is free of personal views which are racist, sexist, or likely to cause offense. Results from this survey will help make improvements to the course and teaching. You will be able to view the final SECaT course report via the UQ Reportal guest account, and changes to the course as a result of student feedback will be published on the ECP.”

Listen to how other teaching staff improve their SECaT response rates:

From Semester 1, 2015 all SECaTs are designed to be confidential in order for the University to comply with its legal obligations in regard to Privacy (Queensland Information Privacy Act 2009) and Duty of Care (Queensland Work Health and Safety Act 2011).

Upon enrolment, students accept the terms specified within PPL 3.60.01 Student Charter.

Students also agree to comply with the policy PPL 3.60.04 Student Integrity and Misconduct which outlines acceptable and inappropriate student behaviours. This is relevant in that it aims to encourage students to provide constructive feedback through SECaT open comments. When providing feedback through the SECaT open comments, students should provide comments intended to help staff to improve teaching and learning quality at UQ.

SECaTs assure student confidentiality in relation to the general reporting of SECaT outcomes to University staff (Academics, Professional staff within faculties and schools or other units and divisions outside of the ITaLI Evaluation team, and University Executives). Student confidentiality is further increased for these reporting processes through the reporting rules:

• No SECaT will be generated if a course has fewer than six (6) students enrolled;
• No quantitative data will be released if a course has fewer than six (6) responses.

However, the University keeps a record of student information related to the completion of SECaTs. This information includes a record of student identification numbers against survey responses. The collection of student identification numbers allows the University to comply with its legal obligations. Apart from when the law says we must do so, the University will also access student information related to student responses when a response has been identified by UQ staff to have breached the University's Student Integrity and Misconduct policy or Duty of Care responsibilities to students and staff. This includes responses which:

• Threaten students or staff in any way by: harassing, vilifying, bullying, abusing, threatening, assaulting or endangering staff, students or other members of the University's community directly or by other means of communication (3.60.04 Student Integrity and Misconduct, subsection 6.2.2 [h]), or
• Are deemed by relevant University staff to be inappropriate because they contain profanities or other statements not provided with the constructive intent for improvements to teaching and learning provisions at the University.

Student identification information in these instances will only be accessed in order to un-publish comments and archive them for legal purposes. Academic staff will not receive student information unless the University is required to provide this information for legal compliance.

Beyond the reasons listed above and to assure student confidentiality, the ITaLI Evaluation team will not release student information from SECaTs for any other purpose to either UQ staff or students. For more information please refer to PPL 3.30.02 Course and Teacher Surveys.

When a response has been identified by UQ staff to have potentially breached the University's policy PPL 3.60.04 Student Integrity and Misconduct or Duty of Care responsibilities to students and staff as part of the Queensland Work Health and Safety Act 2011, as previously outlined under the heading Student confidentiality, staff may request the removal of comments from publication (accessible format within SECaT survey reports or Reportal).

To request a comment removal, please follow the process below:

1. Request approval from the Chair of the School's Teaching and Learning Committee (or equivalent) to remove a comment from the published dataset. Send this request to the Chair via email with the following information:
   • Details for the course, semester or teaching delivery period, and staff name (for Teaching responses).
   • Include an exact copy of the entire comment to be removed. We can only remove the entire comment and not parts of a comment.
   • List your reasoning for the removal request. For example, "The comment provided includes profanities and has no constructive intent to improve the quality of teaching and learning at UQ."
2. Once the request is approved by the Chair (or equivalent) in written form, please email it to evaluations@uq.edu.au and we will action the request promptly. 
3. If a new report is required, we will re-issue a new SECaT report which excludes the unpublished comment.

Please note that the comment is not deleted. It will be archived for legal purposes. Approvals for comment removal may also be provided by the Head of School or Faculty Executives as the delegated authority for a School's or Faculty's data (see PPL 3.30.02 Course and Teacher Survey procedures, last updated May 2016).

1. How the data were collected:

As specified by the policy and procedures PPL 3.30.02 Course and Teacher Surveys, Student Evaluations of Course and Teaching (SECaTs) are conducted every semester for every coursework course with six or more students enrolled. The surveys are administered, firstly, as an institutional quality assurance and evaluation activity, and are consistent with the guidelines outlined by the NHMRC in the Ethical considerations in quality assurance and evaluation activities. Students are invited to participate in the survey through emails, making the surveys accessible via an online portal (https://eval.uq.edu.au). When students are invited to complete their surveys, they are notified that:

• Student feedback informs the understanding of teaching strengths and weaknesses and provides ideas about how courses and teaching can be improved. Survey results are also used for decisions regarding recruitment, continuing employment and promotion, and for decisions about courses, programs, and many aspects of curriculum and the student experience. Please only evaluate staff who have taught you.
• Non-identifiable data collected from the UQ course and teaching survey instruments may be made available to staff for research purposes under Section 5.1 of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (PDF, 603KB).
• Your responses to student evaluations are confidential. Individually identifiable data are not made available to academic staff. By agreeing to complete this evaluation, you agree to provide constructive feedback (positive or negative) which is intended to help improve the quality of teaching and learning at UQ. In doing so, you are also aware of your obligations as a UQ student.
• For more information, please visit: Information for students

The statement above, written with consent for use by the two previous UHREC Chairs (2017), is also included on the Information for students web page.

Data collected from the surveys are then reported to Course and Teaching team members in quantitative format when there are 6 or more responses. All open comments are reported per unique survey. Course and teaching staff do not receive individual student identifiers with responses. This is specified in the policy and procedures as well.

2. The anonymization process for the data:

When reported in UQ systems, results from the survey are individually identifiable, but de-identified in the reporting system (UQ Reportal) using the scripting languages SQL & R. When reporting to staff, students’ individual identities are protected using aggregations with 6 participants (observations) per unit of analysis. This rule is enforced in our reports using data suppression logic, which counts the number of observations available per unit of analysis then suppresses results if there are fewer than 6 observations. This ensures that we help to protect individual identities through reporting.

When data are prepared for secondary uses (for example when staff request data for secondary research purposes beyond quality assurance & evaluation activities), SECaTs are further de-identified using R. The Evaluation Unit staff will remove all individual identifiers (student and staff ID numbers) from requested data prior to release to staff. Identifiers are removed by transforming them into alphanumeric strings using the Universally Unique Identifier (R Package ‘uuid’). Depending on the HREC approval per research project, additional variables can be further de-identified as required.

3. Consent exceptions used:

As UQ now runs over 140,000 SECaT surveys per semester for over 40,000 students and for over 3,000 staff and we receive approximately 40,000 course survey responses and 90,000 teaching survey responses, it is impracticable to obtain consent due to the quantity of the data UQ collects for SECaTs. Impracticality of consent collection is defined according to the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, Section 2.3.10, p.21. Consequently, the surveys are administered with implied consent through “return of a survey” (National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, Section 2.2.5, p16), in that participation and completion of our surveys are considered consent. Due to the scale of the SECaT survey system, it is further impracticable to facilitate consent exemptions to remove data for individuals after survey submissions have been completed and survey results have been reported.

SECaTs can be a source of anxiety and many teaching staff experience challenges when receiving feedback from students. To help benefit from the SECaT process, colleagues and academics from The University of Queensland give tips and ideas on how staff can improve their engagement and outcomes through SECaTs in a series of informative videos: 

• how to improve SECaT Response rate 
• how to improve SECaT Results 
• how to encourage constructive SECaT Feedback.

To enquire about the results of your SECaT surveys, please contact the UQ Evaluation team:

evaluations@uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 60735